Kristen’s a high-rollin’ pin-up supra-artist, who has painted everything from Fender Guitars, to Rocketbuster Cowboy Boots, to the sets of the movie “Anger Management” and custom boots for Jennifer Tilly. Her artwork has appeared in International Tattoo Art magazine, Club International magazine, Juxtapoz magazine, and she is featured in the book “Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious” by Sherri Cullison Pfouts, from Schiffer Publishing.

Like this:

Who doesn’t like watching people create art? It’s amazing to watch it slowly emerge from the nothing – like a magic trick. Add to that the challenge of painting on a surfboard and you have some really awesome viewing. Check out the very different ways these artists use surfboards as their canvas in my top 5 list:

Number 1
The top spot has to be reserved for Drew Brophey – he’s the King of Custom Art! Like many people starting out with board painting, he was my go-to man for entertaining and hugely informative tutorials. This one in particular is an episode from his TV show The Paint Shop, so it’s quite long, but if you’re an aspiring artist it’ll give you an indication of how much hard work and long hours it takes to be successful.

Number 2
I really dig Diggy Smerdon’s unusual style, and this is one of my favourite clips because it combines great art with great production values.
Number 3Zamuro Art definitely has the coolest and most fun movie – I love the editing for this and it shows off the art really well.
Number 4Amanda Peck Phelps is a lady with a mission: to help build fresh water wells in Africa. 20% of the sales from her Project Resurface boards are donated to World Vision. I particularly love this board she’s painting in this clip, the collage style is unusual and very cool.

Number 5I stumbled onto Bruno Alvares‘ work while I was researching this post, and though the movie doesn’t show so much actual painting, it’s artistic and captures the ethos of surfing and surf art and is really enjoyable to watch.

Like this:

Last year after I decided to paint my first surfboard, I did a whole bunch of research online to figure out how it was done and what you need to do to prep the boards and other important things like that.

In my ravenous YouTube watching I found this nice little movie and it’s still one of my favourites. It shows Diggy Smerdon custom painting a surfboard shaped by Luke Young. I really like Diggy’s style and it’s unusual to see loose multi media art like this on a surfboard – it’s well worth checking out!

I’d like to introduce you to a little art crush of mine… he’s an iconic New Zealand artist by the name of Bill Hammond.

I first came across his work when I was on holiday in Wellington in 2008, and saw his exhibition Jingle Jangle Morning at the Wellington City Gallery. Suffice to say, it was so choice I have remembered it to this very day.

The thing about these works is that they are huge and all-encompassing. The jade and emerald green colours are so intense they make your eyes vibrate and your spleen squeak. Viewing the paintings is like a stepping through the looking-glass into a terrifying primaeval world peopled by silent and sentient bird-men.

The birds are Hammond’s main motif. He became haunted by them after a trip to the Auckland Islands in 1989 and he spoke of them as a kind of lost world, ruled over by beak and claw. He saw the islands as being representative of a paradisaical New Zealand, free from predators and free from man.

What impresses me most about these works, and keeps them fresh in my mind after having seen them years ago, is that Hammond has created a poignant and vaguely foreboding world that feels like a dream… and that’s not an easy feat to pull off.

What about you guys? Which artists’ haunt your dreams with their terrifying visions?

Last year on our bi-annual pilgrimage to sample the wines and waves of a certain famous surf town/wine region, we passed a battered mailbox exuberantly painted with peace signs, ‘sick tubes’ and ‘gnarly lefts’. A sign sat out the front proudly proclaiming – “Surf Art Studio”. I snorted, “HA! Sur-Fart more like”. Visions of lurid sunsets and leaping dolphins passed through my mind, and I smiled smugly as we breezed past – everyone knows that’s not real art.

OHO! How the mighty have fallen, I hear you say. Yes, I’ll admit that since I starting surfing this year, I’ve developed a yearning to paint waves, skulls, sharks and mermaids… on surfboards. So what is this surf art genre I was previously so dismissive of? Is it all leaping dolphins, peace signs and bikini-clad babes?

Knowledge is power, so I went forth on an online quest for the true meaning of surf art – and found a delightful website called The Club of the Waves and it is so stylish, and dare I say, tasteful, that I desperately want to be one of their stable of ‘Surf Artists’. Alas, two painted boards do not a surf-artist make, so instead I will settle for a posting of surf artists that I admire, the ones who really push the surf art envelope, making jerks like myself green with envy.

The first cab off the rank is American artist Chris Robb, who features typographic stylings, oceanic colour meditations and a keen eye for design and composition.

Damian Fulton’s maverick mix of surf imagery and urban grit make for a cool-as-shit commentary on the life of an urban surfer.

Serenity emanates out of Wade koniakowsky’s paintings which are as close as you’re going to get (in your office) to sitting on your board in an exotic tropical locale.

Julie Merian hails from the South of France and paints über-real, stylish monochromatic pieces, critiquing urbanisation, development and pollution in the sea.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my slice of humble pie. I’ve come to realise, that whether it’s an outstanding example of the genre like the ones above, or a grubby barrel scribbled in the margins of a text book, it’s all unified by a celebration of the ocean and a recollection of that one perfect wave, and that one perfect moment.